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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
We The Carping
No Curmudgeon today. The Curmudgeon is a deliberately assumed persona, what many fiction writers pretentiously call a “voice,” that helps me to maintain an arch, mildly humorous, and (usually) emotionally restrained tone. He’d be unable to type today, as you’re about to discover, so real person Fran has taken the conn.
You see, I’m angry. Actually, I’m edging toward furious. In fact, I might just be approaching the pitch of rage which those who know me well—you don’t? Lucky you—have come to associate with broad swathes of total destruction copiously littered with severed heads. And for a change, I’ve decided to let it out here at Eternity Road, for all you good folks to “enjoy.”
Blogging colleague Bill Quick, for whom I normally have a high regard, decided very early this morning to express his impatience:
Those of us who are unhappy take note that in the real world, this is not a “war to make Arabian democracies,” or a “War on Osama bin Laden,” it is a war on Islamist fanatics all over the world who have sworn to destroy our country and its people by any means possible, and are doing everything they can to see that end come sooner, rather than later.
[...snip...]
As things stand today, it is difficult to say the danger from these religious madmen is any less than it was on 9/11....
So if the danger to us is no less, why are those of us who are unhappy with that being the situation after four years of “war” called impatient?
If a thug had murdered your neighbor and was now standing in front of your door with a sledge-hammer and a bloody sword, would you be considered impatient for pointing out that the cops you thought you called at 911 haven’t yet arrived and don’t look to be showing up any time soon?
As I often do on such occasions, I’ll point out here that the most important word in that passage, which is used in two critical spots, is the word if. Whenever it’s used, it implies a question: Is this true?
- Is the danger to us no less than it was four years ago?
- Is a heavily armed, bloody-handed thug, or any reasonable facsimile thereof, standing at our door?
On my reading of the evidence, the answers are no, and no, respectively. Obviously, Bill differs. But were my assessments identical to his, I’d still have refrained from making an overwrought comparison that would shame the moonbats at Democratic Underground—and it wouldn’t have mattered how “impatient” I was.
Overwrought comparisons, like predictions of imminent disaster, are a political commonplace. However, they seldom have a significant effect on the immediate decisions of those in power—and thank God and all the saints and angels for that. But such hyperbole isn’t about affecting the decisions of existing officials; it’s about rallying one’s forces to displace those officials come next election. In other words, it’s used to galvanize those who agree with the speaker.
The high-water mark of overwrought comparisons was set a few years back when, in response to the PATRIOT Act and a couple of other bits of Republican-sponsored legislation, a number of persons on the left side of the spectrum started comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. Such comparisons are still being made. Because their sole impact is to reveal the immaturity and political vacuity of those who make them, these slanders are funnier than most political jibes. The funniest bit is that they played a significant role in returning Dubya to the Oval Office for a second term. There’s a lesson in that, somewhere.
That sort of political combat isn’t my focus today. Political combat—the struggle for power through the electoral process—has traditionally been no-holds-barred. The sole standard by which political planners will evaluate a tactic is whether it helps them to get their favored ones elected. (Political strategists and tacticians rank below other forms of life as regards moral evolution.) Given the large setback the American electorate handed to the Democratic Party in 2004, no doubt the tactics the Democrats and their affiliates employed in that election are under close review.
But most of the slanderous statements made about President Bush and the Republican Party these past few years weren’t made or authorized by genuine Democratic Party potentates or strategists. (Let’s omit Howard Dean for the moment; I understand the men in the white coats are on the verge of breaking through his security.) They were made, and are still being made, by persons whose sole imperative is to express their hatred of anyone who differs with their views.
Need it be explicitly said that such persons are unconcerned with real-world developments? With intellectual honesty? With the humility dictated by the cognizance of human fallibility?
I hope not.
But let’s return to Bill Quick’s overwrought comparison:
If a thug had murdered your neighbor and was now standing in front of your door with a sledge-hammer and a bloody sword, would you be considered impatient for pointing out that the cops you thought you called at 911 haven’t yet arrived and don’t look to be showing up any time soon?
I’d bet the mortgage that Bill’s personal situation is as secure as any American’s at this time, excepting the unfortunates in the New Orleans area. That’s despite the fact that he lives in a major metropolitan area, a dense city of about a million people, which murderous Islamist fanatics would probably regard even more dubiously than us constipated Catholic types. But Bill would undoubtedly tell you that in making his comparison, he wasn’t thinking about San Francisco; he was thinking of the general American vulnerability to terrorist attack.
Let’s review a few facts, shall we?
- The last mass terrorist attack on these shores was on Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001—nearly four years ago as I write.
- The targets of that attack, Manhattan and Washington, D.C., sustained huge, tragic losses in life and property, but have recovered almost completely since then.
- The worst terrorist action on our soil since then was the John Muhammad / Lee Malvo sniper spree, which killed a double handful of innocent persons, and which, except for the motivations of the snipers, was indistinguishable from numerous other serial killings committed this century past.
- The focus of Islamic terrorism today is in the Middle East, most notably Iraq. The death toll from terrorist action in Iraq, though horrific at about 3000 lives each of the past two years, is only 10% of the annual toll in lives taken by Saddam Hussein and his terrorism-enabling regime.
- The consensus in the intelligence community is that al-Qaeda, though it still exists and has some capability, has been badly damaged by the last four years of American initiatives, and is having an increasingly difficult time mounting long-distance operations or finding a safe harbor. (The only state that was ever willing to shelter Bin Laden’s gang openly and without apology was Afghanistan under the Taliban.)
- Palestinian terrorists must now cope with having been walled off by Israel, and will soon have to cope...with one another.
- Islamic regimes known to have given material aid (and possibly more) to terrorist groups now find themselves on the defensive. No doubt they pray regularly that President Bush isn’t considering decapitating them.
Now, given that Islamic terrorists don’t oblige us by advertising their headquarters, marching in formation, or wearing color-coded name tags, how much more could we have expected from the past four years’ efforts? Except for the shamefully attractive notion of expelling from our soil everyone with Middle Eastern skin tone, an Arabic-derived name, or any association whatsoever with Islam, and refusing entry to all such persons henceforward, what more could we have done? More to the point, what more could the Bush Administration have attempted that was righteous, prudent, and politically achievable?
Take your time; I’ll wait.
Part of the dynamic of politics is that the dissatisfied will always be louder, and better listened to, than the satisfied. Therefore, there’s an inherent incentive to scream if one wants political power, or influence over those who have it.
Because of the dominance of the Old Media networks and newspapers over the collection and dissemination of presumedly factual information, the screams will receive a gain boost on their way to us. This should be obvious: news organs need to shock and titillate to maintain our interest. After all, how much of our attention would they get by reporting that things are going well:
- That violent crimes and crimes against property are steadily decreasing;
- That Americans are working in larger numbers, and for greater compensation, than ever before;
- That America’s armed forces are exceeding their enlistment and retention goals, while simultaneously proving more capable, better focused, and more determined than ever before;
- That despite our war costs, the federal deficit is gradually shrinking and might be eliminated within a decade;
- That terrorist incidents that reap lives by hundreds or thousands are not happening within our borders?
Think about it. What stories in the Sunday paper do you spend the greater part of your time on? The happy-human-interest stuff or the recountings of blood, gore and devastation? You can look around you and see all the good things for yourself. Why read some third-rate writer’s soppy narratives about them? Why do you think those “journalists” spend so much of their time on celebrities and stories such as the disappearance of Natalee Holloway?
So the screamers and the things they scream about, which by sheer coincidence are the very things “professional journalists,” with their hypertrophied “compassion senses,” love to emphasize, get the front page above the fold.
If the state of the nation were being accurately represented by the typical fare in the Old Media, there’d be nothing to hope for. We might as well all stock up on rifles and high-caliber ammo, because “the war of each against all” has come to town, and no one gets to declare himself a non-combatant. Fortunately, Americans generally have better sense than that. Part of the reason is the Internet Commentariat, of which the Blogosphere is a leading component.
Accuse me of belaboring the obvious if you will, but perhaps it’s not as obvious to some as it should be that human life, cause and effect, and the evaluation of the efficacy and efficiency of one’s actions all exist in time. None of these things is instantaneous; therefore, they preclude instantaneous changes of mind, heart, or conscience. Even a truly boneheaded mistake takes time to make itself known as a mistake, and still more time to correct. Moreover, sometimes we can’t know beforehand how much time any of that will take.
Time, like everything else in our universe, is a scarce resource. It must be apportioned according to one’s priorities. And priorities—dare I say it?—are assigned according to one’s scale of relative values, which means that they, like the values to which they attach, are inherently subjective.
(No Randian sniping, please. Rand was wrong about this. The consequences of one’s actions are objective, determined by the physical laws of reality; the evaluation one places on those consequences is subjective. If it were otherwise, trade would never occur. Also, there would be no masochists, and no San Francisco. But I digress.)
A chief executive in charge of a corporation knows all too well the exhaustibility of time: not merely his own, but that of his underlings also. He knows that there are an infinite number of paths toward profit his company might pursue, but that the finiteness of time compels him to choose among them, which he must do according to his assessment of their probable value to the company. Therefore, he must prioritize them, and choose only from the items at the top of the list.
None of this is rocket science. Even if you’ve never articulated it for yourself, or encountered it explicitly here, you know that human endeavor is a matter of choosing from the possibilities open to you, according to what you most value. This is no less true in politics and government than in any other walk of life.
Now let’s talk about the chief executive of our national political corporation, the federal government of these United States. At this time that happens to be a certain George W. Bush, duly elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. To what extent do you think President Bush is constrained by the finitude of time and other resources? How about by the unreliability of his Cabinet underlings and his supposed co-partisans in Congress? How about by the vitriolic assaults of his political opponents and their allies in the Old Media? Given all those constraints and counterpressures, would you agree that there just might be a few things that, however good and desirable they might be, he simply can’t get to before lunch?
George W. Bush is most emphatically not Adolf Hitler. Hitler had far firmer, much further-reaching command of the totality of Germany’s resources than Dubya can claim. More, he was able to silence or ignore his political opponents, such as they were. The overwhelming majority of the German people were so solidly behind him that at his orders they conquered all of Europe and nearly exterminated Europe’s Jews: seventy million people succeeded in imposing their brutal Reich on a continent of three hundred million. Dubya can’t even get his judicial selections through a nominally friendly Congress—and not for lack of trying.
But Bill is “impatient.” Apparently he thinks the job of expunging Islamic terrorism could be more expeditiously done. Well, perhaps it could; no man is infallible, and George W. Bush is less likely to claim such a status than most. But President Bush is the man the nation has tasked to do it.
Given the facts of our current situation as previously enumerated, the constraints on the Bush Administration imposed by political considerations and competing priorities, and the peculiarly elusive nature of the enemy, how well or badly has Dubya really done? How much better does Bill Quick think he would have done in Dubya’s place? Most appositely, what other priorities would the Quick Administration have had to sacrifice to do it?
It’s a characteristic vice of humanity that everything looks easy to him who doesn’t have to do it. It’s a related vice to demand results at once, when someone else has to hew the wood and draw the water. But just because it’s widespread doesn’t mean it should be allowed to pass without comment.
I am a libertarian, and a former chairman of the Libertarian Party of New York. Among the things that irritated me right out of the LP was other libertarians’ insistence on prompt results—usually without contributions or exertion on their part. As I gave rather copious amounts of time and money to libertarian activism during that period, it chafed me greatly to have to endure the carping of others who wanted to see things done differently, or wanted to see different things done, but showed no slightest inclination to contribute themselves. Eventually, I decided to absent myself from the party and from libertarian organizations generally, and to do what I could for the cause of freedom entirely on my own.
(No, I don’t want to hear about your preferred group. I’ve picked my form of activism, and I intend to remain with it. Enjoy your group for yourself. I’m sure one additional old crank would make no difference to it, anyway.)
Over the years since I made that decision, I’ve been cheered by one and only one political event: the accession of George W. Bush to the Oval Office. Not because he’s a libertarian himself (he isn’t) and not because we share a common Christian allegiance. There are plenty of libertarians I’d personally shoot if I saw them nearing the levers of power, and plenty of self-nominated Christians I wouldn’t trust with a clod of dirt. I applaud Dubya’s election, re-election, and his overall performance in office because I am persuaded, by everything I’ve learned about his conduct, both in full view of the cameras and in less well publicized settings, that he is an honest man. He says what he means, to the best of his ability to express it, and does what he says he’ll do, to the best of his ability to do it. The probability that his successor will be as honest and responsible is vanishingly small; consider the list of candidates for his position and see if you can disagree.
Yet this honest, sincere, remarkably generous and gentle man, who rose against savage opposition to the most powerful, most scrutinized, most pressured office on Earth, is subject to carping from all sides. Some of it is more vicious than any American public figure has ever endured. Some of it is based, not on his actual conduct, efforts, or results, but on his critics’ dislike of his priorities. And some of it, tragically, is emanating from the very persons who claim to hold those priorities themselves.
Everyone knows how to do the boss’s job except the boss. It’s an old saw, re-enacted a billion times a day. I get it from my subordinates, and now and then I give it to my superiors. But in the name of God, can’t we allow a sincere, gentle man the honor that’s due any such person? Can’t we allow that he’s been candid and honest with us, despite what must have been unbelievable pressures to dissimulate at various times? Can’t we allow that, within the limits imposed by circumstances, he’s done as he’s said he would do? Can’t we allow that in his position, we would have done no better and probably a good deal worse?
What is wrong with us? Have we no humility left? Has the Cult of Me drained us of our ability to admit to our own limitations, and by extension, to make allowance for the limitations of others—including the limitations imposed on them by forces beyond their control?
This tirade is addressed not merely to Bill Quick, but to all my brethren on the Right from whom similar carping at the Administration has emanated. Take note, ladies and gentlemen. You’re besmirching your convictions and embarrassing your country. You’re failing in your duty—and it is a duty, regardless of what you might think when your darker nature asserts itself—to give credit where credit is due, to make allowances for differences in priorities, and to acknowledge human limitations and human fallibility. You’re undermining the very things you claim to cherish.
But most of all, you’re making me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.
Comments
Thank you, Sir!
The Left’s whining was understandable (they’re insane). The Right’s carping and bemoaning instant satisfaction is disgusting.
Patience and perseverance will be the test of those of us of age: It will take YEARS to solve the problems on the Gulf Coast. It will take even longer to eradicate the roots of Islamic terror.
Posted by on 08/31/2005 at 06:01 PMSee, now that’s why I should quit blogging. Nice one...very well done. Been searching for these words in my own self.
Posted by Scott Chaffin on 08/31/2005 at 09:50 PMActually, I suspect I might enjoy you when you’re angry, although my enjoyment might be castigated as egging you on.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 08/31/2005 at 11:11 PMAh dunno, Mark. I’m tempted to help you egg him on just so we can watch him go esplodey.
From a safe distance, natch. ;]
Posted by Ironbear on 08/31/2005 at 11:17 PMYa know, Fran, I agree with you completely about Bush’s character and basic honesty. I believe that. Hell, I drove to Crawford this last weekend with my kids and went to the rally to support his policies and our troops.
But, but, but...I think we on the conservative side have a right to give him a dig or three about McCain-Feingold and the Medicare Drug Benefit, for instance. He could have vetoed those odious pieces of legislation. What were they going to say? He’s Hitler squared, cubed, with energizer batteries?
I also agree with you about humility and what one would do if they were the actual president? The simple fact of the matter is that most bloggers couldn’t get elected dog catcher let alone President. My dad actually ran for county judge in a very conservative county last year. He lost in part because he said he’d follow the law and not bother to feel sorry for the criminals no matter who their mommy and daddy was. Too opinionated, to vocal, and frankly not compassionate enough for a general election. Same reason my mom couldn’t get elected state rep. Just not enough of the feel good stuff. She spoke her mind and it cost her, big time.
Politicians can say out loud what we want to hear and get elected. At this point in American history, it’s just a simple fact.
That is where the essay should go next, IMO. You (in the sense of the complainer, the one who knows a better way, myself included) will never be elected president because of your extreme views. How do we propose to change that?
Posted by on 09/01/2005 at 12:16 AMFran,
Bill Quick thinks we ought to depose the rulers of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia and replace them. So do I, and I think you do too.
So our only disagreement, really, would be over implementation. How exactly would we go about that?
Suppose for the moment that Bush agrees with Bill, me, and you. Now suppose further that Bush inherited a corps of generals most of whom were appointed by Clinton and most of whom, not coincidentally, are useless. Suppose he inherited a badly dispirited, worn-out military, which will take years to rebuild to its former might. Suppose that therefore, the United States no longer has the military power to invade and occupy four nations at once.
If all these things were true, would Bush say so in public? Of course he wouldn’t! He would be notifying our enemies that it was free playtime until we got our act together, and encouraging not-quite-enemies like China to start trouble unmolested by America.
I’d tell Bill to remember the long pause between 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban, and the even longer pause between the decision to invade Iraq and the actual invasion. During the second pause, I doubted the President was really going to do it, and I despaired. When he finally did the right thing, and it seemed he had planned to all along, I resolved that next time there was a long pause, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
Posted by on 09/01/2005 at 07:15 AMMark, Ironbear - I’m with you guys. Now if we can just get Connie to throw a coupla those eggs ...
Posted by Joe on 09/02/2005 at 09:25 AM
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